Zig, an app that aims to simplify users’ consumption of news, is Mr. Carter’s first public project since he left Vanity Fair last month. It resembles an Instagram of news: a feed of photographs culled from stories around the web, with the material tailored to a user’s interests.

... But the former magazine editor said that he was setting his own ambitions beyond the media realm.

“This is more of an outlier to what I will be planning over the next six months,” he said. “This is not my life’s work going forward. But I’m willing to help them in any possible way I can.”